wsu/eng5070

    The Red and White by Miklos Jancso was an antiwar movie.  Jancso did a great work in sending the real evil face of any war, especially if it is a civil war.  This movie had a history reference to it. It was about the Civil War that was in 1919 during the Bolshevik Revolution. Jancso wanted to sent a message of every dead man was a lost to the country and to everyone even to his enemies in this evil war. We saw very clearly the severe killing of both sides. Yong men were killed over and over from both sides. There was no winner in a civil war. All were loosing even the winner. The characters were not close to us, because there was not anyone that was more important than the others. In this movie there were no main characters that stayed with us to the end of the movie. We did not know much about their personal life, or who they were and what was there hope and fears. All we knew was about them if they were only the Red or the white. Even the characters who we know did not continue with us till the end of the movie, most of the time they were killed. Almost all of them were young men who got killed in a bad way with no mercy from both sides.

    Jancso did not make it clear for the audience to distinguish between the Red and White. There was a kind of difficulty in following that. Furthermore, it was not only hard for the audience to know the difference; it was hard for the two groups to know who was the Red or the white. It was hard because they were the same people of the same culture and the same language, yet they treated each other in a cruel way of killing with no mercy or thought of what they were doing and whom are they killing.

    All the characters were either on one side or the other, except the nurse. She was more humane than those soldiers who only follow of what they receive as orders. She was a righteous person that she was blind of seeing the color Red or White, all she saw was patience who needed care and help. All she saw was human being that deserves to live instead of getting killed in a civil war, but their cruel manners reached her too; she was forced to separate the two groups. Further more, she was killed as treason. She got killed because she did not want to be on any side.

    Jancso also picked a plain landscape to refer to the emptiness of their war.  It was so quite to the point of ignoring everything around. It was like a dead planet. The scenes did not take place in cities or places filled with people, which was better but it was like a worthless war. 

    Was this world a colorful life or was it in black and white? It was an important question and what was more important than it was its answer. If the person was happy he/she will see it beautiful with all different colors.  If the person was sad and do not have hope in this life anymore, he/she will see it in a black and white version. That was what happens in the movie Damnation by Bela Tarr.

    Tarr did a great job in explaining what was going in the characters souls. The scenes and shots were not enough to send the message, but everything around us was a message too. The movie was about a man who loved a married woman. She was the only hope in his life. It was a movie of emptiness and loneliness. Tarr did not only want us to know the feelings of his characters, but furthermore, he wanted us to live with them the way they view this life.

    The whole movie was going I slow actions. Everything moves slowly. Time goes slowly when we were away from the people we love and care about. Life was worthless and board with no interest or hopes if we were separated from our love ones. Even though the movie was done in 2005, Tarr picked black and white colors for his movie to show the feelings of his characters. It was almost all the time rainy and dark. They were so depressed and unhappy in their life. Tarr was great in putting us very close to the character to the moment that we did get depressed, but interesting at the same time.

    The story was a love story between two people who their destiny drove them in different directions just like those buckets. They were only going to where they had to, without any choice to change their path. Even though people tend to think that it was up to them to control their life and to pick what ever they want, but it was not the truth, and that was very clear in Damnation.  

    We know the story of the movie, but we did not even know the names of the characters. It seemed to Tarr, that the names were not important, what was more important to him was the story. It could be the story of anyone of us. We saw the man trying to convince her to forgive him, and he was promising her he would change and do anything for her. It was like a hint that they were one day together but could not keep being with each other. At the beginning of the movie, I thought that she was depressed because she felt guilty loving another person, or she was sad that she was married to a person who she does not love. But at the end of the movie, I could not see what she went to a third man cheating her husband and her lover. Which led him to loose everything and every hope he had, he was barking at the dog giving up from this world.

   Lucian Pintillie in his movie The Oak tried to bring out different situations in an ironic way.  Nela was a girl who loved her father so much. He was a great leader and hero in her point of view. The movie started with Nela shocked of her father’s death, her hero, and the person who loved her most of all the others around her.  Her father was laying dead while she was watching what a great father he was to her. No one would blame her because he was so good to her. She was his baby. Nela did not want to give up from her father even after his death. She believed he was a hero in his life and he deserves to stay a hero even after his death. Nela did not want to bury him. She wanted to donate his body to any thing that was valuable to others or to science. But then Nela struggles when she finds the truth about her father and what a bad person he was. She went looking for the truth from her mother and found out that he was going after the Jews roots. She gets raped in the village where it was part of a corruption country.  We see Nela gets rapped, but it was a country filled with corruption and injustice. Nela was a strong person who did not pay much of attention to her rape. She kept walking in her path, even thought she was getting shocked and shocked over and over.  Mitica was another charater of the film and he was a nice and caring person in a world that was filled with corruption.

  The saddest scene of the movie was when seeing the children were taken as hostage. Everyone would think that government would do the best it can to save those innocent children, at least they would try. Furthermore, even the young men did not seem very bad. They did pick the wrong thing to do, but they thought the government would care about those children. The shocking moment was when the leaders gave the order just to shoot on them. Even they were animals, giving up from those little angels was an awful thing to do. The government did not care about its people. What ever comes after that was not much of important.

    At the end of the movie, we see Nela burying the ashes of her father with pictures of the children she worked with. She buried him and trying to buried every bad thing with him to She wanted to start a new life and did not want to look back to the communist past.

    In The Death of Mr. Lazarescu we see a unique technique of filming. The story of the movie was driven from its name. It was the slowly death of Mr. Lazarescu, but that was not the only slowly thing that was going on. Puiu film the movie in a very slowly way, so he would bring us so close to the action. Was the intention of Puiu to picture what the reality of this life is?  Or was the whole movie an irony of the governments who treats its people like a cattle. Is people the least concerns of the government, and if they are so, what is the government priority? Too many questions and the answer would be left to the audience them self, and each person has the right to view it in his/her point of view.

    Puiu had a good ways of showing of what was going in the patience's mind. The camera was not steady. It use to shake as if it was a person who is walking with a little of balance. It was the thought of a sick person. The light was going on and off as if it was the hope and fears that use to flash back and forth in Mr. Lazarescu's head. The house was not clean and full of cats all around him.

 The movie started with an old lonely man (Mr. Lazarescu) who was very sick. He called the ambulance, but they did not come. After that he asks help from his neighbors who did the best of what they can do. The processes of Mr. Lazarescu being sick until he was in the ambulance car took about one hour. The night was going slow for the person of pain and suffering. Pain in human being translate to an boring life, it brings a dark shadow to the soul just as the real night brings to world, with a peace in beauty in the second one and pain in the first one. Even in the ambulance it took a very long time to get to the hospital as if we were with them traveling in that night. Mr. Lazaresuc is an example of any person. This is life and it is beautiful, but harsh. It is like a beautiful flower with all the thorns around it. One day we might be in the position of Mr. Lazaresuc or even in a worst situation, and the sad part about it is that we cannot do any thing to prevent it from happing to us in the future. It showed us how to except the life the way it is until the last moments of our lives.

     Mr. Lazaresuc is a man who had no one in this world except his daughter who left him to Canada . He was lonely in his own country. The governments do not care about the people and their suffering. It took for ever to the ambulance to get to there. In that same night that Mr. Lazaresuc was sick, a huge accident happens in which it made the hospitals full of those people. He went through different hospitals in that long night.

Furthermore, that was not the only problem; the doctors did not care about him and did not treat him well like the first doctor who did not care about him because he only thought that he was sick because he had been drinking a lot.  Every one was making fun of him and giving him their precious advices. The nurses did not care abut the patience. They were worried about their personal problems. The most ironic part to me was that in some of the hospitals he visited, he was not accepted because of the accident. They would put the people of the accident first, but not him as if he was not in a serious situation just as one of them. The ambulance lady was with him all night. She went through the suffering of any patience that might be in a hospital one night. She was a nice person to him. She treated him nice with respect and care. She was close to us because of her humane personality that seemed if it was vanished from the others.

     Puiu did a great job of filming in the hospital. We see and here other people talking. We get to know some of their problems, but not everything. It is exactly if we are in a hospital. We would here other people problems and concerns. Also some shots of the nurses and their problems.  That was the long movie of a long night of a very slowly death of Mr. Lazarescu.

In the movie Fuss, by Pjer Zalica had a interesting details on the period of post-war. The deepest thing was the lost of the love ones. Zaim was just a symbol of thousands who lost their love ones. (Bogdan Diklic) Zaim was a great actor. He gave us a father's point of view in a very clear and with compassion. Zaim showed us how relatives life a very hard life during the shadow of the war. He let us live and understand how evil are wars, and wars would always destroy, and it would never build.  Zaim was a father who lost his son Adnan. He loved him so much that he was not strong enough to except his death. He would always see him in his vision, and talk with him.  He had a great believe that his son still alive and one day he will return back home. The interesting thing was that when ever he talked to his son, and he would plane to harm his self, his son would not tell him no. Which this can be one of two things; either his son was a great son that he would never disagree with his father, and he would always follow what he says, Or  it was simply all going in his mind which there was not a real son to care about his father when he was harming his self. Zaim did not see any reason to live after his son's death. He decided to go to his son, but he picked a special time. It was the time of the arrival of President Clinton. Clinton was supposed to visit the country. There was a great deal of preparing for this visit, but it did not work out. His visit was a hope for the region as they believed that his visit will make the whole world to look at them.

Even though the movie was sad because it of the negative sides we saw of the country post the war, but it was run in a comedy movie. Zalica did drop a funny thing here and there in an ironic way which maybe in somehow did reflect on reality. Like when one of the Bosnian who was in the government who thought that Bill Clinton was a famous singer, or when the Serbs thought that the stars of the American Flag were red. And as a reflection from the Bosnian side which the governor of the town yelled and assumed that the Serbs are bloody people and lots more. We also see how innocent people pay ever day because of the mines that were there, If though the war ended, the suffering of the people still there.

    No Man’s Land by Danis Tavovic was a very interesting movie. It was a movie that showed a problem that a country was going through. The movie started with soldiers lost in the darkness of the night and the fog. This was a symbol of how the people of one country and one region were lost of the darkness of the war and hatred. We see the two soldiers who are from the two different sides get trapped in one place and, they were facing the same destiny.  Both of them were injured and bleeding. Both were in pain. It was a very clear symbol of how these two sides were in pain and losing life in this war. Both of them were suffering and loosing more and more each day passes by.

    In the beginning of the film, I thought that both of them will be friends, and they will understand each other. They were talking the same language, they lived in the same place, and they went to the same school. They even knew a girl who was with them in the school. They were like two brothers who were raised and lived together, but became enemies. None of them stepped back just like the two sides they were representing. Both of the soldiers act stupidly toward each other. Who ever had the gun would force the other person to admit that his side was the part who started the war. Where we see it was obvious that each one believed that his part was the right one.  Bosnia wanted to separate which was wrong and the country would not accept, but if the Bosnians had their religion freedom they would not ask for the war. We see this obviously in countries where it is a multicultural and multi-religions and people have freedom of religions. During the movie, we see that one of them will have the weapon with him and then things would change, and the other one would have until the moment where both of them had the weapon and they were equal.

    Both of them died at the end of the movie. The war did not get them to any where. Even though the UN was there, they couldn’t care about the people anyway. So it was showing how they were useless. Both of them get killed at the end, while the third man was left there. No one was able to move him because of the mine that was underneath him. He was left there just like the country which was left to die slowly and slowly.

    Tanovic showed real pictures of the war. Buildings were burring, people were jumping out of the windows, and news on the T.V. The country itself had a beautiful landscapes, it was so beautiful. On the other hand we see its beauty was damage by the war.